Kings a Real Pain in Ear for Webster

Your hockey players play Winnipeg. Lose. Fly to Pittsburgh. Get two goals ahead. Lose. Travel on to Toronto. Lose. Go to Detroit. Get three goals ahead. Lose. Go to Minnesota. Give up a goal 13 seconds into the game. Lose.

Lose some nights with big leads. Lose some nights without even putting up fights. Lose every which way, but lose.

Lose without you, so you can’t even be there to chew anybody out.

It’s enough to make the red bulb inside your head glow red.

For Tom Webster, the one thing more depressing than coaching the Kings over the last couple of weeks has been not coaching them.

You’re in NHL limbo. You watch TV. You make mental notes, things you want to remind the players or the interim coaches of, next time you speak with them. This is your team, but somebody else is running it.

All you can do is watch your team lose. You resist the urge to cross-check the television set into the wall.

“I guess I’m more analytical than anything,” Webster said. “I try not to lose control of my emotions.”

For your health’s sake?

“Yes, mostly that,” Webster said. “As well as the furniture’s.”

Webster is on leave of absence because of an inner-ear malfunction, the same kind that interrupted his first season coaching the New York Rangers in 1986. He slipped and fell in a shower on Jan. 26 in Edmonton and aggravated the old problem.

Rest was prescribed, but that didn’t clear up the condition. Webster is scheduled to have surgery Tuesday, and he’s expected to miss another three weeks.

Webster went to their practice rink in Culver City first thing Friday to wait for the Kings to return from their trip that took them five games below .500 and left them closer to last place in the Smythe Division than to first place.

All you can do is watch and wait.

“Somebody has to unlock the doors, turn on the lights,” Webster said, finding himself at a nearly deserted rink, all dressed up and no one to coach.

With the team’s plane late getting back to LAX, Webster waited around, trying to keep busy, watching wing Scott Bjugstad work out, keeping an eye on injured Tony Granato, the new kid in town, the kid the Kings acquired in the Bernie Nicholls trade with the Rangers. The Kings are waiting for Granato the same way they are waiting for Webster. Granato has been in only one game.

Cap Raeder and Rick Wilson are co-coaching the team. Wayne Gretzky is ankle-deep in a slump. Kelly Hrudey has mononucleosis. The Kings are slightly unglued.

“The hardest part,” Webster said, “is that we’re so darn close. It’s all the little mistakes that keep killing us, little things that have turned into one big headache.

“You look at the games on this trip. We had a genuine chance to win just about all of them. And, somehow or other, we end up losing.”

What can you do about it?

“What can you do? About all you can do is skate your way out of it.”

It would help to have healthy and sound bodies. It also would help if the Kings could ever find a couple of line partners for Gretzky and leave them there for more than a month or two. Tomas Sandstrom, the main acquisition in the Nicholls deal, is trying to make the adjustment, make his presence felt.

“I’m very pleased with Sandstrom, with what he’s contributed so far,” Webster said. “It’s going to take time to adjust to Wayne, to being on his wing, but that’ll work out. I’m not worried about Sandstrom. He’ll be fine.”

No, what he’s worried about is how some of the other Kings are playing, and how recent developments might be affecting them, body and soul.

Now is the time for all good Kings to come to the aid of the party. To do what Todd Elik has done. Elik, who came to the Kings from the Rangers late in 1988, has been one of the few players of late to show that he’s here and he intends to stay. The kid plays as if he means business.

Some of the other Kings need to look in mirrors and see if there’s any reflection. They are disappearing; there is no nicer way to put it. Only two of the Campbell Conference’s 10 teams--Detroit and Vancouver--have worse records than Los Angeles. Shameful.

At the moment, the Kings are embarrassing themselves, squandering the greatness of Gretzky and risking the alienation of all those fans who had gotten to know not only them, but their sport.

In some cases, when things are going bad, you can comfort someone by saying: “Well, at least you’ve still got your health.”

To Tom Webster, you can’t even say that.

The Kings need him back, need him badly. Somebody has to turn on their lights.